The Biology
by SparkleHorse
Summary: Sequel to 'Not Broken'


Across the diamond sea the boat slashed forward. The twins stood at the front rails, their life jackets orange as new pennies, their long blond hair whipping in the salty wind. Spencer manned the steering wheel in his captain's cap.

"Spencer takes being a captain pretty seriously," Freddy mentioned.

"Our dad made sure we learned to pilot boats and respect them," Carly said, adjusting the height of her seat, rubbing sunblock onto pale knees "We both know our way around aquatic vehicles." She smiled at Freddy, but her eyes, behind dark sunglasses, watched Sam.

"Man, I still can't believe that guy left Spencer an island in his will," Freddie said.

"I guess he _really_ liked that Labradoodle sculpture," Carly replied. She watched Sam standing next to Melanie at the bow, both their hands wrapped around the top railings, whispering twin secrets to each other. Melanie, with the shorter hair tied back, wore short shorts. The pale skin on her calves and thighs glowed in the early sunshine. Sam, still with her long blond curls, wore cut-off cargo pants that hid the scars on her leg.

Melanie glanced back, saw Carly watching, nudged her sister, motioned. The twins walked back across the deck - Sam with assurance as if she didn't notice the motion of the boat cutting through the waves, Melanie with hesitant, unsteady steps. Sam offered her hand for guidance, keeping her sister upright until they both took seats in the white leather chairs across from Carly and Freddie.

"Guys, can you believe we graduate from high school next week?" Melanie said with excitement.

"It's pretty hard to believe," Carly said. Sam's thumb swept circles around the little copper rivet sewn into the corner of her pocket.

"I just wish our ceremonies weren't on the same day, so I could come back and see you guys graduate, too," Melanie said. "It's such a big day for Sam."

Freddie leaned forward. "How _did_ you score over 1400 on the SAT?" he asked. He still could not be convinced that Sam hadn't cheated.

Sam pretended to look at something on her shoe. "I just had plenty of time to study when I was... you know, recovering."

Carly caught Freddie's eyes, shook her head slightly. She knew how much Sam hated to talk about the months that had followed 'the incident.' Freddy shrugged, gave up, and leaned back in his chair.

_I know she didn't study_, Carly thought. _I was there every day after school. She just had all this inside her and surprised everyone, even me. Scholarship offers from nearly every school in the country and she's going to U of Washington with me?_

Carly pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. She could smell Melanie's coconut sun lotion and the salt in the air, so she relaxed in her seat and let Freddie and Melanie do the talking for most of the trip. She watched Sam from the corner of her eye. Sam seemed back to normal, even taking part in the conversation without hurling too many insults at Freddie, but Carly knew there were scars hidden under Sam's long T-shirt. And under the scars and skin? Carly had been fascinated with anatomy ever since the incident - she had studied how the body works; she had spent long hours on the internet looking up how receptors sent messages along the body's dense highway of nervous fibers and across synapses to the brain. There had been times she'd stayed up until dawn reading of how damaged skin knits itself back together; how blood platelets clot at the site of an open wound; how some organs can take on the duty of other organs that have been damaged beyond repair. She'd learned that pain was nothing more than a signal of misfunction.

One day, at a table in the back of the library, she read that the clitoris has twice as many nerves and is twice as sensitive as the head of a guy's penis.

She wondered if Sam could still feel pleasure. What if the doctors had made some mistake and stitched her back together wrong? What if something had been severed and there was a break somewhere in the nervous pathways? And how could she ever again imagine that the mind and the body were one?

Here reverie was broken as Sam shouted back to Spencer.

"Yo, Spence, is that it?" the blond asked, pointing to a pine covered cluster of rocks that jutted from the sea.

"I think it is," Spencer yelled back.

And now Carly could smell the island, as if the pine boughs had been fermenting on the island floor and giving off a sharply-scented mist that was now carried forward by the wind.

Spencer aimed the boat toward the concrete launch ramp and guided it in. Freddy leapt from the boat onto the dock and tied the line to the mooring post. Carly tossed him his bedroll and backpack, then gathered up her own things. She stepped onto the dock and walked forward onto land, followed by Spencer and the twins.

"I still can't believe you guys have your own island!" Melanie enthused. "It's all so crazy!"

"There's the cabin," Sam said, pointing into the shadows and trees where a tin roof and windowpane reflected the sunlight.

Spencer led them forward into the shadows. Sunlight fell in bubbly clusters on the layers of pine needles and cones that bordered the trail. At the front of the cabin he fished a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. They all spilled inside.

"Smells musty and old," Sam said. "Like Freddie's underwear."

"Well, sunlight and fresh air are the best disinfectants," Spencer said. "Or... wait. Is it bleach?" He pondered this for a minute. "Oh well, we don't have any bleach, so fresh air it is! Everyone open a window!"

Carly made her way across the living room, her sandals clip clopping on the stone floor.

A fold out sofa sat along one wall in front of the big window. The twins climbed on, their knees sinking into the cushions, and peeled back the curtains, letting a wash of sunlight flood the room. A stone fireplace was set in the opposite wall, with a large, plush rug spread on the floor in front of it. A narrow entry way led from the living room into the tiny kitchen, where there stood only a small table, a wood burning stove, and a wash basin with a pump handle for drawing water from the well. Carly opened the window over the table and looked out into the back yard.

"Oh, Spencer, an outhouse?" She glanced to the other side of the back yard. "And an outdoor shower?"

Sam snuck up behind her. Hands and chin on Carly's shoulder, Sam's ear against Carly's.

"You're so prissy," Sam said.

"The prissiest," Carly murmured back. Sam leaned against Carly for a long minute, as if resting on her. Carly leaned her head against Sam's, clasped the hand that laid on her shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of the blond girl's chest against her back as Sam drew long breaths.

Melanie wandered into the kitchen, oblivious to the moment. "Hey, do you guys want to go explore the island, or maybe go swimming?"

Sam drew away.

"I'd love to go swimming," Carly said, still looking out the window.

"I think I'll explore the island some," Sam said, heading toward the backdoor.

Carly spun around. "You don't want to go swimming with us?"

Sam paused in the doorway, shook her head. "Nah."

* * *

She changed into her swimsuit behind the outhouse, too afraid to go into it for fear of the spiders that might be lurking inside; then slathered on thick layers of sunblock, for she was pale and burned easily. She stepped carefully back to the front of the cabin to find Sam already taking off into the woods along a walking trail, swinging a heavy stick at low hanging tree branches, while Melanie waited for her by the front door.

Carly's hands instinctively covered her breasts at the sight of Melanie in a two piece - the aqua suit revealed that Melanie, like her sister, was quite a bit more developed than Carly.

Carly forced her hands to drop to her sides, but Melanie seemed not to notice. She smiled at Carly, said 'hey' as she took off toward the beach. Carly followed, nodding and saying 'yeah' as Melanie rambled on. The blond girl's body was all smooth planes and flawless marble skin. She even had the same mole on her upper arm that Sam had.

_The same as Sam's body_, Carly thought, _but without the scars._

She quietly slapped herself for thinking that.

* * *

The next few hours were a blur of sunlight and shouts lost in the wind, of pale limbs diving under salt water, of Freddy cannonballing off the pier and Melanie showing off the moves she'd learned in her synchronized swimming classes, of Carly back-stroking and side-pedaling and floating lazily until Spencer shouted for her to swim back closer to shore.

She moved through the water in an unhurried breast stroke, swimming toward the group. From this distance she could see Sam sitting on shore back where the grassy hill ran down to the beach, where grass and sand met. The blond girl appeared preoccupied with arranging pebbles in front of her.

Carly swam up to Melanie, who dozed on an inner tube. Carly grasped the tube and held herself upright in the water. Melanie's head raised up as she awoke; she smiled from behind sunglasses.

"Hey, Carly."

Carly motioned toward shore with her chin. "Who knew? 1400 on the SAT."

Melanie glanced back at her sister, still sitting in the sand, engrossed with her pebbles. She shrugged.

"Did you know?" Carly asked. "I mean, that she was capable of that? You're her twin."

Melanie sighed. She took off her sunglasses and smiled sadly at Carly. "To be honest, she's closer to you that she is to me. I'm surprised you didn't know."

Carly spit out a stray bit of seaweed that floated into her mouth. "I knew she was smarter than she let on, but... Jeez."

"No, I mean," Melanie began, cutting herself off as the realization dawned. "Carly," she said emphatically, leaning in. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Freddie and Spencer were still over by the pier, out of hearing range, then leaned in closer to Carly. "Sam took the test that got me into private school."

Carly coughed out a mouthful of salt water. "What?"

"Shh! She never wanted anyone to know."

"But, you got the full scholarship because it was the highest test score the school had ever seen. How did you...?"

"I had to study my butt off all the time to keep my grades up. But for Sam it was no problem to go in there and just ace the test."

Carly, still holding on to the inner tube, let herself sink. She could barely touch bottom with her toes. She rose back up and wiped the water from her face.

"But why? Why would she do that?"

"I honestly could not tell you why. Maybe she just wanted to get me out of the house." Melanie shrugged. "I really am surprised she never told you."

* * *

Carly, damp towel heavy around her shoulders, walked up the beach.

Sam, seeing Carly approach, hurriedly swept away the pebbles she had been working on for so long. She smiled at Carly, motioned for the dark haired girl to sit next to her.

Carly plopped down, the fine white sand cushioning her butt.

"What's up, Carly-girl?" Sam said, pale toes playing in the sand.

Carly shook her head, yawned. "Just tired." She brushed the skin on her arm with her thumb. "And greasy."

Sam chuckled. "You're so white, you have to put tons and tons of sun block on."

Carly squinted out at the ocean for a long moment, saying nothing, then finally, "Yeah."

"Go take a shower, then." Sam leaned back on her elbows, kicking her legs out.

"Maybe later," Carly said, glancing over. Sam's shorts legs had ridden up a bit; she pulled the left one down over her knee to cover up the line of a scar left visible. Carly pretended not to notice.

* * *

Carly washed off in the spray of the outdoor shower behind the cabin, dried; then put on a thick grey sweatshirt, for the long shadows were growing icy as the sun sank out into the ocean.

Spencer already had a campfire lit in a circle of stones in the front yard. Carly walked through the shadows at the side of the cabin, to the front, the sweatshirt baggy on her thin frame, her legs cold. Sam, sitting in a wide wooden deck chair, waved Carly over.

"Sit with me," Sam said, moving her body over so that Carly would have room.

Carly smiled, sat. Her hip and thigh pressed against Sam's.

There was talk and food as the last light died and the stars bloomed overhead. Hot dogs, marshmallows, hot chocolate. Spencer told goofy jokes and played his banjo, Melanie talked of her plans for college. There were scary stories and 'remember whens' as the night wore on, but no mention by anyone of starting iCarly again.

Carly let the others do the talking; she stayed quiet, as did Sam, though Carly could occasionally feel Sam's body shudder with quiet laughter against her own.

And late that night, deep in the quiet hours while the others snored and dreamed in the cabin, Carly lay next to Sam on the floor in front of the fireplace. Sam slept on her side, her arm out of the sleeping bag, facing away from Carly. Carly lay awake, eyes studying the smooth skin of Sam's neck and arm. The blond girl's skin was flushed - her body's reaction to the flames burning steadily in the fireplace. Carly knew that the skin would be hot to the touch - how she longed to lay her fingers on the neck and the arm, to feel for herself the process by which Sam's body adjusted to changes in temperature.

Carly fought to keep her hands at her side. She focused on the long rise and fall of Sam's chest, imagined the rich network of blood vessels in the upper respiratory tract. _Oxygen goes into the lungs_, she thought, _and is exchanged with the carbon dioxide in the blood. The rate of respiration slows during sleep. Simple mechanics._

Carly bit her lip, fighting for control, remembering all the other nights since The Incident that she cried herself to sleep. _Nothing changes_, she thought; _I almost lost her and I still can't tell her how much I really love her._

* * *

A week later Sam walked across the stage in the auditorium and shook hands with Principal Franklin, took her diploma to a standing ovation from the crowd. The noise went on for several minutes as everyone applauded the fact that she managed to graduate despite the ordeal she had suffered that year.

Later, when the ceremony was over, the mass of people spilled out into the parking lot; thousands of people - relatives who'd flown in from all over the country now shouting into their cell phones as they tried to find each other again in the confusion, parents on their cell phones telling the kids to be home at a certain time, kids on their phones as they texted friends directions to parties; a roar of voices combining, rising into the darkening air, but still the girls found each other in the noisy crowd.

"Let's get out of here," Sam shouted, laughed. She grabbed Carly's wrist and guided her through the dense press of bodies, past the teachers and parents who talked of the children's futures, past old school friends who stood occupied with distant relatives, out toward the edge of the parking lot where the crowd thinned, away from the people they had known for so long, away from the place they had spent the last twelve years of their lives, no hesitation on Sam's part, no nostalgia or looking back. She held on to Carly's wrist and maneuvered them through the maze of parked cars, toward the gate at the entrance of the school, then under the brightness of the last street lamp at the edge of the parking lot. As she crossed the street Carly looked back at the crowd, and marveled at how the lights from all their cell phones seemed to hover in the air like a million tiny stars fallen to earth.

* * *

Moonlight blazed on the roof.

"That sucks that Spencer has to sell the island," Sam said from her corner. She sat in the shadows against the small brick structure that housed Stillwell's emergency generators, her knees drawn against her body, sipping her drink through a straw - Dr. Pepper and Jagermeister.

"That's taxes for you," Carly murmured. She scooped gravel with her palm, let it pour out.

"How long do will you guys still have it?"

"Spencer has to meet the guy next weekend to sign it over."

Sam chuckled from the corner. "That's going to make a great story someday.. 'Hey, Carly, remember when you owned an island for three weeks?'"

Carly laughed gently and laid back against the moonlit gravel. "At least selling it will pay for four years of college... and a lot more!"

Even in the dark Carly knew Sam was smiling and nodding. She watched papery thin clouds whip across the sky. Sam sat in her corner, sipping her drink, silent.

"And you've got your scholarship," Carly said.

"Mm hmm."

"Four more years together!"

"That's one thing that doesn't have to change," Sam replied quietly.

Carly didn't know where the tear came from that was suddenly trekking down her cheek. She felt it's coldness, noticed how much the temperature had dropped since they'd climbed up to the roof.

"1400, huh?"

"Yeah," Sam said. She kicked her feet out and leaned forward. "It's like, I spent all those years slacking off at school, so I had to make up for it." She leaned forward more, her face edging out of the shadows. "Don't you think one big, good thing can make up for lots of little bad things?"

Carly rolled to her stomach, rested her chin on her fingers, watched Sam.

"I had to do it so I could get into college," Sam continued. "I have to become a therapist, I think... Or something useful to help other people heal from being injured. Because I don't know what else to do, you know? Almost dying is supposed to give you this great insight and make everything in your life clear, but it doesn't. I don't know any secret enlightenment stuff. I still don't know what I want to do, but I feel like I have to help people and make it all mean something, this whole last year. I just think I have to try to make up for all the little bad things... And the one big, bad thing."

Carly raised her head. "What one big, bad thing?"

"Duh! The Incident."

"That wasn't your fault," she said quietly. "You know that."

Sam took a long pull from her straw. "It was a careless mistake." A long pause. "And I feel bad because I know it hurt you, too. I know you were hurting..."

Sam collapsed back into the shadows.

"Oh god, it's so hard to say what you really want to say," the blond girl continued. "Even nearly dying doesn't change anything or make it easier."

"Just say it, Sam," Carly urged, raising her body up. "Whatever it is."

Sam sniffed, tapped her foot. "I think the worst thing you can do is to hurt the person you love the most."

Carly brushed hair from her eyes. "You love me the most, Sam?"

The blond girl, in the shadows, sniffed, nodded. She tucked her hands under her arms to keep warm in the sudden gust of cold wind. Carly crawled across the gravel, into Sam's shadows, until her body was against Sam's.

"Is that why you let Melanie take credit for your test back in junior high? Even then you loved me the most?"

"Remember when I used to spend every day at your house?"

"Of course. Our food bill skyrocketed."

Sam chuckled, rested her forehead against Carly's ear. "I didn't want to leave you. It's that simple. I still don't. That's not the kind of change I could deal with."

And then Carly's lips were in Sam's hair, kissing their way down. Carly's hands were cold on Sam's cheeks, but it didn't matter because they were guiding Sam's face upward, and when their mouths connected in the shadows the sensation was so warm and soft and sweet.

Carly pulled away gently. "Let's go to the island."

"Tonight? Right now?"

"Yes." Her fingers combed trails in Sam's hair. "There's so much more I have to find out about you. What if you would have taken all that with you? I would have never known."

_And I want to make sure you still work, that they stitched you back right, _Carly thought.

Sam wiped her tears on Carly's sleeve while Carly stroked her hair and whispered, "There's so much more inside you than just chemicals and processes... There has to be more.. There has to be..."

* * *

"Can you navigate by the stars?"

"I actually can," Carly yelled over the roar of wind, waves, and boat motor. Sam laughed beside her, laid her head on Carly's shoulder while Carly steered them across the darkness of Puget Sound at midnight. They rode silently the rest of the way, huddling against each other under a heavy wool blanket.

At the island they tied the boat to the dock and carried duffel bags up the dark trail to the cabin. They lit an oil lamp and moved the fold-out couch to the center of the living room, laying their sleeping bags and blankets on the mattress. While Sam built up the firewood in the fireplace, Carly went through the duffel bags and laid out their provisions on the floor - cans of chicken noodle soup, hot chocolate, coffee, bottled water, raisins, protein bars.

When at last the fire was burning, Sam turned. "It's weird that you're not going to have this place for very long. Better make the most of it, huh?"

"Yeah."

Silence.

"So..." Sam said, her hands tucked under her arms, facing Carly from across the opposite side of the fold out bed.

"So," Carly said, smiling, shrugging out of her jacket, unbuttoning her shirt.

Sam, smiling, began to undress.

And when at last Sam stood naked before her, Carly studied the scars in the firelight. Like faded whiplashes they ran along her thigh, down her arm and belly, under her breast, jagged and irregular, but less livid with the passage of time.

_The scars don't change her, _Carly thought. _They are the new part of who she is now_.

As they drew back the covers and climbed into bed, Carly whispered, "You're beautiful."

_And it is beautiful_, Carly thought, _to see Sam moan, to know that the pleasure coursing through her nervous pathways comes from your own mouth and hands_.

And it was beautiful to watch Sam's body clench and release, her muscles stiffen and go slack as waves of endorphins flooded her brain - to see her body rid itself in a single moment of all the guilt and accumulated emotions of these last months, like a cleansing.

How beautiful it was to see her body work again after being stitched back together, and mended.


End file.
